


A Fickle Mistress

by trntriap



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25552240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trntriap/pseuds/trntriap
Summary: Terrible things happen to those who meddle with time, Hermione.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle, Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	1. Time is a Fickle Mistress

Hermione felt a twinge in her stomach as she took in the sight of him. 

Translucent skin, slits for eyes - a vibrant shade of red, no nose, and thin lipped. He was locked in duel with Harry — Harry Potter, and she finds it strange that she seems to know Tom better than Harry, now. 

“There she is!” a shrill voice yells, one she recognized as belonging to Bellatrix Lestrange, and she instantly feels more pairs of eyes than she’d like to acknowledge on her at once. 

Including his. He lazily flicks his wand, casting a particularly strong _Protego_ to fend off the poorly cast _Sectumsempra_ spell Harry sent his way before apparating with a puff of black smoke. He is suddenly behind her, then. 

“How nice of you to join us, Miss Granger… _wife._ ” Tom drawls, and as he begins to circle her she notices that his black robes flow behind him in an almost elegant manner. 

“Tom,” she acknowledges. Her eyes flicker around the battlefield, around _Hogwarts._ “It’s hard to imagine that you’d ever willingly damage this school.” 

He tuts lightly, wand trained on her, “I am a founders heir as you well know, dear. I can — “ he was cut off by a loud _expeliarmus!_ that makes Hermione flinch. 

“ _Petrificus Totalus.”_ His tone is amused as he turns his attention to the culprit, to _Harry._

“Oh, Harry. You’d do well to stay out of this. For once, it doesn’t concern you.” Tom spoke mockingly, slowly turning his head in the direction of Hermione. 

“Doesn’t it, though?” Hermione inquires, wand ready, “I’ll come with you, Tom. Just let him go.” 

“So that you may betray me yet again?” He chuckles, “I think not.” 

“Tom — “

“Do _not_ call me by that name, girl!” He bellows, throwing an unknown dark curse at her. She barely throws a shielding charm up in time, and as she does, she is vaguely reminded that they are being watched by everyone on the battlefield. The looks are puzzled, fascinated, downright _disgusted_ as onlookers recognize the familiarity between Hermione and Voldemort. 

He is haphazardly throwing spells at her, and Hermione’s mind is racing. She can’t let him win. She _can’t._ “ _Protego!_ ” She shouts, shielding a particularly nasty curse and breaking into a sprint to get to Harry. 

As she reaches his body, no sooner than she says _finite_ she is under a body bind curse herself. Harry is standing now, eyes wide with confusion, hurt, _betrayal —_

She tries to will him to leave her, to _run, you stupid boy! Just run!_ but it seems he is too overwhelmed, too intrigued to move away from her, because he sees it. 

He sees her Mark. 

Her Mark, it’s different from the others, because she isn’t a Death Eater, no. She is his _wife,_ and her Mark, without the skull, was a simple snake starting from her wrist up to her elbow. Despite the body bind, she could feel it slither in her skin — being called by the man who put it there, as he seemed to enjoy the provocation of Harry Potter more than he’d admit —

Harry watches the Mark, and his eyes meet hers. A sneer writes itself across his features as tears well. “Hermione… I never thought — not you. Not _you!_ ” He turns to face Voldemort now, but she can’t see him, she can’t see Tom, she can only hear. 

“Potter,” the undertone of a warning has etched into Tom’s voice, “this does not concern you. _Move._ ”

“You sick _bastard!_ ” Harry roars, and Hermione can feel the tears behind her eyes that won’t fall, she wants to get up, to _do_ something, but this bind is too powerful, too restrictive. She thinks with all her might, _finite finite finite_ but nothing happens. Nothing happens when Harry shouts a curse she never thought she’d hear tumble from his lips, the killing curse. 

Nothing happens. 

“ _Avada Kedavra.”_ She hears a loud, sickening _thud_ as a body hits the ground, and she can only recognize the voice — it was Tom — she hopes it wasn’t —

But as her eyes take in the form of Harry Potter, fallen to the ground not far from her, she wants to scream. She wants to shout, she wants to turn back time, just _one_ more time — 

_No._

She doesn’t realize that the body bind has been lifted until she hears a strangled sob wretch in her throat. She doesn’t move, she doesn’t think. She sobs, and she sobs, and _then_ —

Soft footsteps approach her, and she knows that he will taunt her. Tom always did like to torture before he killed. 

“And here I had such hope for you, Hermione.” 

She looks up, and he is no longer snake faced. He looks like _Tom_ — remarkably the _same_ as he’d been when she’d met him at just seventeen — and she doesn’t know if it’s an illusion, if it’s the trauma her mind has undergone, if it’s his soul piecing back together, but no he hasn’t felt remorse, maybe some other dark ritual he’s found —

Her string of thoughts die out as he levitates her to her feet, and she bears weight on them once again. He is mere inches from her now, wand pointed at her throat. 

She swallows heavily, but she smiles at him. His thick brow twitched, but he made no other emotion discernible in his face. 

“I have waited,” he starts, crowds of people screaming curses and spells at one another again forgotten, “I have waited for this moment. And I have debated on what I would do when I saw you again. I’ve had you watched throughout your time at Hogwarts, but I knew that _that_ you hadn’t traveled yet… would’ve rather ruined the point, I think.”

She doesn’t respond, she just stares at him. She knows what he plans to do, she can see it now. He is troubled, like he doesn’t _want_ to, but he _has_ to —

“Don’t, Tom.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, and he chuckles. 

“I think we both know why I must, Hermione. A _Mudblood_ wife will do no good for my cause, and I think you’d rather it be me than one of them.” 

“Wouldn’t it?” 

He tsks her again, “You know, I’ve always found it _amusing_ how you accuse me of being manipulative, and yet, here _you_ are, attempting to manipulate me into letting you live.” 

“You don’t know for certain what will happen to you if you kill me. You could very well die, too.” 

“I have removed the piece of my soul that was attached to you. You know that.” 

Her smile widens, “I guess we will see then, won’t we, Tom?” 

And then, then he _snatches_ her, and they fall into a whirlwind of smoke, of black clouds, and they are elsewhere. 

She recognizes it at she looks around, the clearing. The clearing they were married in. 

“How… _romantic._ ” She snarks, and his hand detaches from her waist, hesitates on her forearm — her wrist — before letting her go. He takes two or three steps back, but she can’t look at him. She focuses on a tree in the distance, on the other side of the clearing, anything but _him._

_How stupid_ she had been, to think that Fate would send her back, to _save_ him. She merely managed to change his appearance, it would seem. 

“It was a glamour,” he remarks as if reading her thoughts, and her head snaps to him.

“What was?” 

“When you appeared. I remember what I looked like in your original timeline, and I … placed a modified glamour on myself, modified in that only you could see it. I wanted you to know,” 

“Know what?” The words hang like they are clouds, innocuously floating in the air.

“That my appearance may not be _him_ … but _I_ am.”

A sigh escapes her, and she can feel tears begin to fall. She can’t hold it anymore, and she is _enraged._

“Go on, then!” She yells, and she can see him jump slightly, as if he didn’t expect it, but _how_ could he not _expect it —_ “Kill me, Tom, like you do everything and everyone else! Just a ‘means to an end, Hermione’, right? You need to, to convince _yourself._ Convince yourself that you never felt anything for me, because you’re _above_ that, isn’t that right, Tom? Because you couldn’t be so _pathetically_ human, right, Tom? So go ahead! You’d do well to get on with it, KILL ME!” She is screaming by the time she is finished, and he is _shaking._

Shaking with rage and hatred and anger, and his eyes are red and ominous as he raises his wand to her once again, “You _left,_ Hermione. You had a choice and you left. You _knew_ what that meant. You _knew,_ and I am not inclined to feel pity for you.”

She is crying now and wracked with sobs, and she won’t look at him. She can’t. 

“I — you left me, you never loved me.” His voice is getting closer now, and his tone is no longer sure — it is shaky, and she knows it’s coming. She doesn’t bother refuting his claims with a response — he doesn’t deserve one. 

  
  


“No matter, because I could never love _you._ ” 

She knows that he knows it _stings_ , that regardless of _everything,_ and _damn him_ but it fucking _stings._

She feels his lips on her forehead, and she looks up at him, then. His eyes are red, and full of hatred, and he holds her cheek in his hand, his wand under her throat. 

And so, as he opens his mouth to recite the spell he knows well, she decides that time was, indeed, a fickle mistress. She isn’t sure if the single tear that falls down his cheek is a figment of her imagination, but she has no time to ponder because —

_“Avada Kedavra.”_

_Terrible things happen to those who meddle with time, Hermione._

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it’s a little vague, I hope you enjoyed it though. I will work my way back from this - so everything else will be in “the past”, for the most part. Think of it as a series of connected one-shots. More to come this week.


	2. Noticing Hermione Granger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tom notices Hermione Granger, or more accurately, notices that she is a liar.

You see, the interesting thing about Hermione Granger is that on the surface, she is ridiculously _dull_ , nothing extraordinary. She is a bookworm — always has her nose in a book, in the library, in the common room, Merlin, even during _Quidditch_ matches. She is decidedly swotty, answering questions in class like it’s her job. She is pretty, hair either up or cascading down her back like a mane, a tan tone to her skin that he doesn’t think is natural, like she’d spent a lot of time in the sun before she transferred to Hogwarts _but that doesn’t make sense if she’s from France and hiding from Grindelwald like she says —_ eyes the color of honey. She is quiet, rarely speaking to anyone other than Professors. She doesn’t even respond to jabs about her hair, her bookish personality, her swooty attitude, _nothing._

He almost thought she was deaf at first, or surely plotting some sort of well timed, inconspicuous revenge on the culprits of her criticism, but it had been two weeks and still, _nothing.”_ How in Merlin's name did she get sorted into _Slytherin_ of all places, he wonders. Yes, she is nothing noteworthy, and as such, he spent a day observing her when she’d first arrived — a transfer at Hogwarts _is_ a rarity, after all — before he lost interest. 

  
These traits of hers annoy their housemates, but what annoys _him_ most about her is that she is damn near _useless_ with a wand. 

It is decidedly ironic, how someone who seems to know the theory behind _everything_ under the sun is so bloody _clumsy_ with her wand. Merrythought was visibly disappointed during the first dueling class of the year when she’d paired Granger up with Lestrange, and the girl froze. She’d held her wand — shakily, and murmured a disarming spell that barely flickered into being. She looked sheepish and _gods,_ she was downright _pathetic_ — he had wanted to simply sneer at her, but he couldn’t because he has an image to uphold. 

So when Merrythought pairs her with Sharron Parkinson, who had spent all morning snarking about Granger’s wild “nest-excuse-for-hair”, her mediocrity, how quiet and incompetent and utterly useless Parkinson believed her to be, all within Granger’s earshot — and Parkinson sneers at Granger, disgustedly shrilling about being paired with the useless _Mudblood —_

And Granger _suddenly_ knows her way around a wand and — he is shocked at how _fierce_ she becomes. He is shocked and panicked, because he certainly never saw _this_ coming. Her hair goes wild with her magic, visible static cracklings around her as she glares at Parkinson. She casts a stunner first, which Parkinson easily deflects. 

“What’s the matter, Mudblood? Can’t show us any wand work that a second year couldn’t do?” 

That _word._ That word seems to spark something in Granger, nothing, none of the insults from this morning had caused her to even glance up from her bloody book but that _word_ — and she began throwing curses that even _he_ had trouble recognizing, all because of a _word._

Parkinson doesn’t last long at all, and when she stumbles and limps as she stands after Granger decides to end the duel by disarming her, she tells the Greengrass girl who helps her that it’s due to shock. He resists the painful urge to roll his eyes at the lie. 

Granger, on the other hand. He knows several things about her, now. She is intelligent to the point of being a swot, she is a fierce dueler, but she is also, most certainly and most importantly, a _liar._

Merrythought looks intrigued and excited, likely chalking Granger’s sudden competence with a wand to her teaching, but Tom _knew_ better. 

Tom knew now that, had he been paying attention, he’d have seen that Granger was wearing a mask. A facade. She was _fake_ — like him. But _why_ would one want to fake incompetence? What would that gain her? Unless… unless she was hiding something, didn’t want to draw attention. Wanted to appear as if she had no potential, let alone anything remarkable, aside from her ability to memorize a textbook with a glance. 

But Tom has long since grown to accept the fact that the remarkable potential in people doesn’t always show itself freely - sometimes it needs to be coaxed into growth. Even if, he thinks to himself, one must resort to unorthodox methods to do so. 

And as such, he should’ve damn well _known_ better. He should’ve known better than to barely give a transfer student who was strange as strange could get a second thought. She could very well be a threat, he decides, and she likely has the upper hand because he’s spent the first two weeks of the term ignoring her existence after learning her habits, as he does with every student in his year. No matter, he can play catch-up. 

He catches her eyes from across the Defense classroom, and she freezes, _almost_ imperceptibly, and if he wasn’t _him_ and if she hadn’t performed remarkably _opposite_ to how she’d performed in previous Defence classes, he likely would’ve never noticed. 

But he did. 

He raises a brow in her direction, and she looks away hurriedly, and he catches a look before she does, she is too frightened or possibly too disgusted to even _look_ at him. Not that this is the first time, but he didn’t too much care why the new girl was frightened of him before — it made no difference. But _now?_

Now that she’s shown her hand to the entire Defence classroom, made it _known that she was hiding something —_

It is clear to him now that he has made his decision on how best to handle the enigma that is Hermione Granger. He _will_ have her secrets, and he will either collect her or _destroy_ her. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo I know I said “more to come this week” but aside from some editing, this chapter was already completed. So I did a quick edit (I’m sure there are still mistakes so don’t mind me as I edit them after posting) in order to get this up sooner because ... well, I’m excited. Also, I’m aware that there are quite a few run on sentences — this is meant to be a sort of rambling drabble of Tom’s thoughts on Hermione before and after she.’a “shown her hand” so to speak. I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t always think in complete sentences, so I don’t write characters who always do. I hope you guys find Tom to be in character — he is hard to write. If not, please let me know. If so, please also let me know. Thanks and I hope you enjoyed the chapter.


End file.
